David Bergman — ALL ACCESS — sports, concert, and music photographer

On Tuesday, I shot Madina Lake while they were working on their new album “Attics to Eden” in a recording studio in New Jersey.

It’s always a challenge to make a natural looking “in studio” shot because bands rarely record multiple instruments at the same time. Each of the parts are recorded at different times so we have to set up a shot of the guys surrounded by recording equipment to show they’re in the studio.

After getting that out of the way, I moved them into the large studio, where there’s a foosball table. I thought it would be a fun prop for a photo, but I had no idea that these guys are very competitive foosballers. I just let them go at it while I shot away.

At the end, I posed them for a more formal portrait. I would have liked to get my camera lower into the table so the wooden foosball men were more prominent, but I couldn’t fit the D3 and 14-24 in between the posts without taking apart the table. I didn’t think the studio manager would be too happy about that, so I made the best of it.

The goal of a shoot like this is to get a few different “looks” in a short amount of time. The guys were a pleasure to work with and everything went smoothly — as long as I didn’t try to take them away from the foosball table.

A few months ago, Radar Magazine published Eric Spitznagel’s piece about the Barenaked Ladies rock cruise, which includes a voluntary group nude photo. The story starts like this: “Getting naked with hundreds of people you’ve never met might sound like a good idea. But it turns out to be kind of awkward and uncomfortable. Especially when it’s 10 a.m. and you’re stone-cold sober on the deck of a cruise ship somewhere in the Atlantic.”

As the band’s tour photographer, I’ve had the honor of shooting the infamous photos. I’ve previously posted them on my blog here and here (warning: not safe for work).

I had no idea that Radar had a writer on the ship last February, but was pleasantly surprised when the magazine contacted me to license photos for the story. They wanted to run the naked photo as the opener across two pages.

After talking with the band, we decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate to run it bigger than the size offered to the fans on the ship - about 7X9 inches (an 8X10 photo with a white border).

Radar ran the “before” photo as the opening spread and used the smaller naked photo inside.

Spitznagel recently republished his story, in a slightly different form, on his blog and you can read it here.

Unfortunately, Radar went out of business last week, citing current economic conditions. I’m sorry to see them go as it was a fun read. Maybe they would have lasted another issue or two if we had let them publish the naked photo much bigger.

By the way, the next BNL cruise leaves on February 1st out of Miami. I’m not sure if there are any cabins left, but you can go to the Ships and Dip site to find out. Maybe I’ll photograph you naked!

In between football games, I spent a week in Miami Beach at Best Buy’s “convergence summit.” It’s a retreat for some of the company’s top employees and I was brought in by Blue Pixel, a group of digital photography experts. They organized some fun events including a video commercial production contest, green screen karaoke, and technology presentations by photographers like me.

I’ve worked Best Buy events in the past and they are a lot of fun. It’s a nice change of pace from my usual shooting schedule and is always in a great locale.

Most of the time I was either speaking with small groups or helping teams with their video projects.

We did have some time to relax, though. One night there were about 50 of us hanging out on the beach around midnight. It was dark. The beach was lit only by moonlight. I took some photos of home theater supervisor Stephanie Radtke near the water, but it needed a little punch. I asked Blue Pixel president Alex Stevens to hold my small flashlight.

It gave just enough pop to light up her portrait.

I shot the photo with the D3 and 14-24 at 6400 ASA, 1/15 sec, and F/2.8.

At the end of the week, we were treated to a private concert by Ludacris. There were a lot of cell phone cameras, but I had the only “real” camera in the room.

It’s a good thing that the light was so good in the Jackie Gleason Theater. Otherwise, I would have had to pull out my flashlight.

This past week I made portraits of the band Houston Calls. Since the guys are based in New Jersey, they agreed to come in to New York City for the shoot.

I originally wanted to photograph them in the park where I shot Armor For Sleep. But when I met them, we decided it would be more fun to stand in the middle of a major city street.

I set up my lights on the median in the middle of Broadway and just hoped that we wouldn’t get busted for not having a permit.

I put warming gels on two SB800’s and dialed my camera’s white balance to compensate. As I’ve discussed before, this “normalizes” the light on the guys while turning the background a cold blue.

I processed my RAW files in Aperture and did some tweaking in Photoshop to get the final image.

Despite a few comments from passersby and a couple of honking horns, the shoot went off without incident.

Last week I went back to the white house. No, not THE White House, but the one in State College, PA.

About a year ago, Penn State suggested that all of their fans wear white to the Notre Dame football game. Usually it’s just the students that participate, but on that day, more than 100,000 people joined in.

I photographed the event for Sports Illustrated and it was published in the “Leading Off” section across two pages (see it here).

A week ago, I was back again to cover the Illinois - Penn State game. It turns out that they were having their second ever white house.

I didn’t want to make the same photo again. Besides, this was an 8 pm game so I wouldn’t have a sunset like last time.

Instead, I decided to shoot the team running on to the field from a different angle. I’ve shot it from the front before (even had a cover from it), but had never tried it from the back at this stadium.

It took me a while to work my way through the crowd so that I could get in position before the game. When I got there, I convinced two students to let me stand between them so that I could center myself right over the tunnel where the team enters the field.

The photo ran in “Leading Off” again so I guess you could say that I’m now the official white house photographer.